I'm looking for some examples of .NET search forms where there are many, many search criteria. I need a way to organize all the different options in some sort of coherent fashion. There are probably 100 different criterion that could be used, but odds are they won't all be used at the same time. I'm pretty horrible with UIs, so I'd like some suggestions. Right now I have it all stored in tables with check boxes and a couple of tabs that separate things logically, and I'm not very pleased with the way it looks. If anyone could point to some search forms they've come across that elegantly incorporate a lot of search items I'd appreciate it. I don't even really need code, I just want some designs to get the ball rolling.

Thanks.

5/31/2008 12:10:49 PM

from what you wrote i only have a vague sense of what you are trying to accomplish. can you show us what you have so far?

have you looked at advanced search pages for major websites? google, yahoo, ebay, amazon?

5/31/2008 12:35:47 PM

Don't display all the criteria at once. Have a form with a blank search like this:

[Element to Search] [Comparison Operator] [Compare Against]

[Element to Search] would be a dropdown list with all your fields or whatever you're searching. [Comparison Operator] would be another list with =, <=, >=, <>, LIKE, STARTS WITH, ENDS WITH, or any other valid comparisons that would be performed on that field. Depending on the selections in [Element to Search] and [Comparison Operator], [Compare Against] might be a text box for manually entering what to compare against or drop down box containing all the fields again. When the user fills out one search criterion, another row would appear in the same form for entering another search criterion.

5/31/2008 5:07:49 PM

Thanks for the suggestions. I can't show you for confidentiality reasons. I think what I'll do is have all the options in drop down boxes and let them build a search string and then add the criteria they select to a master search string. Something like:

[Element to Search] [Comparison Operator] [Compare Against][Add to search]

Then have a search button that submits all the search strings they have created.

6/1/2008 7:21:04 PM

I have a quick question. I'm building and displaying a table of search criteria as the user adds them. If they add a criterion, and decide they want to remove it, I've included a remove button for each criterion. Is there an easy way at runtime to add an ASP.NET element, such as a button, to a table? What I'm doing now is setting a table cell.Text to "<input id='Button1' type='button' value='Remove' />", which is obviously just an HTML button. It seems like there should be an easier way to set the contents of a table's cell to an ASP element.

6/1/2008 10:27:37 PM